Mccombie etal
conveyors for packing machines



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4 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed April 5, 1965 WWW Wm wan ATTORNEY Jan. 10, 1967 w, MCCOMBIE ETAL 3,297,137

I v CONVEYORS FOR PACKING MACHINES Filed April 5, 1965 4 Sheets-Sheet s iNVENTORS Jan. 10, 1967 J, w. M COMBIE ETAL 3,297,137

CONVEYORS FOR PACKING MACHINES 4 Sheets-Sheet -L Filed April 1965 ATTORNEYS United States Patent 3,297,137 CGNVEYURS FGR PAEKENG MACHlNES John William McCornhie and Leonard Thornton, London, England, assignors to The Molins Organisation Limited, London, England, a corporation of Great Britain Filed Apr. 5, 1965, Ser. No. 445,360 Claims priority, application Great Britain, Apr. 16, 1964, 15,861/64 4 Claims. (Cl. l98-76) This invention concerns improvements in conveyors for packing machines and is primarily intended for packing machines running at high speeds.

Many packing machines have conveyors furnished with pushers which move along a machine bed and collect articles and material from magazines and other sources of supply. A typical example is a cigarette packing machine where cigarettes are fed down to the bed and carried along by the pushers as batches, to meet pieces of wrapping material, for example, metal foil, which are wrapped around the batches. With the high speeds now current in the art, the impact of the pushers on the ends of the cigarettes and the impact of the leading ends of the cigarettes on the foil is liable to injure the cigarettes, the foil, or both. The effect on the cigarettes when the wrapper is a piece of stiff paper, such as a paper packet label, is more pronounced. The invention is of course useful for packing any other suitable commodity.

According to the invention there is provided a packing machine comprising an endless conveyor, having pushers equally spaced apart along its length, and means for continuously driving the conveyor, including a variable speed device, said device operating to reduce the pusher speed at the time when it impacts with an article, or the article impacts with a piece of wrapping material fed into the path of the pusher, and to increase the speed at intervening times. Where several pushers on a conveyor are arranged to impact with more than one article, or an article and a wrapper, at the same time, the articles, or article and wrapper, are fed from sources of supply spaced apart by a multiple of one pusher pitch along the conveyor.

Where the machine has several parallel conveyors, that is, a multiple-track machine, the pushers on one conveyor may be staggered with respect to those on another conveyor so that, as far as possible, the high pusher speed on one conveyor may be arranged to correspond with the low pusher speed on the other conveyor, in order to make the load on the machine driving arrangements as even as possible and avoid noise and shock.

In the specific embodiment, described later, two pairs of pusher tracks are used and the pairs are staggered by half a pusher pitch, and as the high speed and low speed movements of a pair are 180 apart, the high speed of one pair will coincide with the low speed of the other pair.

Further according to the invention there is provided a multiple-track packing machine wherein the pusher tracks are arranged in pairs and the bed of the machine, along which the pushers on the conveyors run, and which is provided with slots through which the pushers are connected by thin plates to the conveyors, comprises a separate central portion between the bed slots appertaining to the pushers of each pair, and a bridge, supported on the bed at positions exterior to the pair of pusher tracks is provided for supporting the said central portion. Normally the pushers of a pair are arranged as close as possible to one another and this permits the use of a single knife for cutting a pairof webs of wrapping material when articles are to be wrapped and helps to reduce the width of the machine bed to the minimum.

In cigarette packing machines it is well known to Wrap batches of cigarettes in metal foil consisting of two pieces,

3,297,137 Patented Jan. 10, 1967 a long piece which encloses a batch on all sides, except for the upper portion which will be the front of the batch when the latter is enclosed in a carton or the like, and a short piece for enclosing the upper portion. For this style of wrapping it is common to feed a web of wrapping material relatively slowly while the long piece is being fed and cut off, and then to accelerate the web feeding and cut off a short piece and so that the short piece overtakes the trailing end of the long piece, Whereafter the two pieces are folded around the batch as one wrapper. The variable speed device hereinafter described can be used to drive each wrapper feeding device but as only one speed change is required per revolution of the wrapper feeding roller the said device is arranged for this purpose whereas for driving two pairs of pushers, spaced by in time, the device has to make two speed changes per revolution, one change for each pair.

The invention will be more fully described with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:

FIGURE 1 is a diagrammatic section of a cigarette packing machine,

FIGURE 2 is a plan of FIGURE 1,

FIGURE 3 is a cross-section of the machine showing the conveyor driving arrangements,

FIGURE 4 is a sectional plan view of driving devices for the mechanism shown in FIGURE 3,

FIGURE 5 is a section of FIGURE 4 on the line 5-5 but showing a cam roller positioned beyond 5-5 in full lines,

FIGURE 6 is a plan of part of FIGURE 4 looking in the direction of the arrow A.

Referring first to FIGURES 1 and 2, the machine shown is for wrapping batches of cigarettes 1 in sheets 2 of metal foil, or other suitable material. The cigarettes are fed from a hopper 3 through slots 4 formed by partitions 5, and pushers 6, supported on endless conveyors 7 by carriers 13, pass through the slots and eject batches of cigarettes, all in the known manner. The machine shown has four pusher tracks and those in the upper part of FIGURE 2 are offset from those in the lower part by half the pusher pitch. This is partly for convenience as the mechanism for feeding the wrapping material down into the path of the cigarettes is rather bulky, and by separating these mechanisms lengthwise of the machine, inspection and service of the machine is made easier, but another reason is given later.

As a batch meets a sheet of wrapping material it first folds the sheet into a U about the top and bottom faces of the batch and, almost simultaneously, the material extending beyond each side of the batch at the leading end is formed into a narrow tuck to lie on the side of the batch. At about the same time, the material extending beyond the sides of the batch and in the planes of the top and bottom faces is folded by ploughshare folders on to the sides of the batch, and a block-ended wrapping open at the rear end results. All these operations are conventional and no further description is required.

When a batch wrapped in this manner reaches a position somewhat to the left of the position marked 8 in FIGURE 1, the associated pusher 6 tips back out of the open end of the wrapper and then the open end of the wrapper is folded by first tucking the narrow sides of the wrapping material on to the rear end of the article in the usual manner and then the remaining broad flaps are folded up, and down, by tuckers 9 and 10 respectively. All these operations, and devices for performing them, are quite well known but the parts 9 and 10 are illustrated principally because the tucker 10 is on an endless conveyor 11 and, after making the fold, the tucker pulls the finished article along the bed 12 of the machine so that further operations by other mechanism may take place.

conveyor system being staggered with respect to those of the other, the machine including a variable speed device whereby each conveyor system is driven at varying speeds, the higher speed of one conveyor system substantially cor responding to the lower speed of the other, so as to reduce uneven loading on the machine drive, the said variable speed device including a driving shaft rotating at a uniform rate and having a member fixed'theret-o projecting outward at opposite sides of the shaft axis, a lever pivoted to each outer end of the said projecting memhere, the lever pivots being on a straight line passing through the shaft axis, a first roller on each lever and a fixed cam having a groove in which the first rollers run as the driving shaft rotates, each lever having a second roller at its free end; a driven member attached to a shaft or the like geared to each of the respective conveyors and a pair of guides on a flat face of each driven member between which the second rollers are located whereby, as the driving shaft rotates, e-ach lever swings on its pivot as its first roller moves around the cam groove and the second roller of each lever drives its respective driven member at varying speeds during one revolution of the driven shaft, according to the instant disposition of its second roller in the guides, and the conveyor geared to one driven member moves at its maximum speed at the time the other conveyor moves at its minimum speed.

4. A multiple track packing machine having two parallel sets of pushers, a conveyor system common to both sets of ushers and comprising a pair of parallel conveyors carrying a series of transverse carrier members each of which carries a pair of side-by-side pushers, a bed located above said carrier members and having an upper surface which supports articles being pushed by said pushers, said bed including two side portions and a central portion separate from said side portions and spaced therefrom to permit the pushers to project upwardly therethrough, and a bridge supporting said central portion from above and supported on said side portions of the bed.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,481,207 1/1924 Johnson. 1,979,207 10/1934 Milmoe. 2,783,589 3/1957 Wiley 74393 X 3,158,250 11/1964 Smith 198173 X EVON C. BLUNK, Primary Examiner. R. I. HICKEY, Assistant Examiner.

3,297,138 MAKING Jan. 10, 1967 A. K. M COMBIE APPARATUS FOR FEEDING CIGARETTES .FROM CIGARETTE MACHINES T0 PACKING MACHINES Original Filed Oct. 29, 1963 3 Sheets-Sheet l 

1. A PACKING MACHINE HAVING A PLURALITY OF PARALLEL CONVEYOR SYSTEMS, EACH CARRYING PUSHERS EQUALLY SPACED ALONG ITS LENGTH FOR PUSHING ARTICLES TO BE PACKED, THE PUSHERS OF ONE CONVEYOR SYSTEM BEING STAGGERED WITH RESPECT TO THOSE OF ANOTHER, A SINGLE CONSTANT-SPEED DRIVE MEANS COUPLED TO SAID CONVEYOR SYSTEMS TO IMPART MOVEMENT THERETO, VARIABLE SPEED DEVICES EACH COUPLING SAID DRIVE MEANS TO ONE OF SAID CONVEYOR SYSTEMS AND OPERATIVE IN REGULAR SEQUENCE TO IMPART TO THEIR RESPECTIVE ASSOCIATED CONVEYOR SYSTEMS A CYCLICALLY VARYING SPEED SO THAT THE RESULTING SPEED VARIATIONS IN SAID DIFFERENT CONVEYOR SYSTEMS ARE SUBSTANTIALLY REGULARLY OUT OF PHASE WITH EACH OTHER. 